Bill MacKay and Katinka Kleijn – Stir
Drag City – 11 October 2019
As well as being masters of their instruments, Dutch cellist Katinka Kleijn and Chicagoan guitarist Bill MacKay are also similarly adept at playing in many different styles, with Kleijn’s colourful palette using classical, folk, progressive rock, chamber music and experimentalism and MacKay known for collaborations and solo work that takes in jazz, avant-rock, folk, blues and experimentalism. Stir, an album coming off the back of many live shows played as a duo, comes under this ‘experimental’ umbrella and is a wonderfully off-kilter set full of dynamic compositions and musical intuition through a slightly odd-couple pairing of cello with mostly clean but sometimes pedal-fed electric guitar.
The pair take it in turns to lead the instrumental pieces and often switch many times during the tune, giving an impression of sessions that rely upon both players’ broad experience of improvising techniques, along with their obviously strong and long-standing artistic relationship. Take short track ‘No One Here is a Stranger’ for example; it begins with Kleijn’s cello sweeping notes in front of MacKay’s more subdued picking, before, about halfway in, he begins a speedy, scale-led performance that Kleijn gently strums along with before the pair switch again and MacKay follows Kleijn’s bowing. It’s seamless stuff but complex and technically demanding and before you realise there has been another shift, we are in the following track ‘Door to the Magic Theatre’.
Because Stir pretty much does away with the conventional dull end of track pauses and lets the album play out almost as one continuous piece that will create its own space when the duo decide that is where the music is heading, or perhaps when they are reading each other and seeing which direction it may take. Towards the end of ‘Door to the Magic Theatre’, the pair slow it all right down and play less notes, letting in so much of the space that is a key part of their sound, and you can almost see them watching each other and reading that next move. It makes the listening experience more akin to a live show, where nothing is guaranteed, or indeed, predictable.
Some tunes are friendlier than others, although the set as a whole hangs together in perfect cohesion. ‘The Hermetic Circle’ uses more classical styles and slightly higher cello notes at points, along with more muted strummed playing when Bill’s picking speeds up, but, as a chamber piece, it is quite a playful one, with the music disregarding some of the menace of other tunes here for a more innocent and exploratory mood. Indeed, at points, Bill’s guitar almost tiptoes furtively before Kleijn’s picked notes mimic it and then dance around and tease it. I can imagine it being a fun one to re-create live, it being a little dramatic joy on record. In contrast, pieces like ‘A Series of Doors’ are immediately darker, with Bill’s guitar distorted and the cello sat behind, either worrying it or going in low to create drone notes. The playing here is itchier and more anxious, with the protagonists, rather than adventuring, seemingly lost and confused. Alongside songs like ‘The Hermetic Circle’ and final piece ‘Path to the Peak’, with its slide guitar lines and trippy textures, it displays the creativity and versatility of this duo, who use just the cello and guitar to form such an artistically and emotionally broad-reaching canvas.
Video by Timothy Breen
Photo Credit: Richard E. Adame (courtesy of Drag City)